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Focusing on imaginaries of the ideal city is an important method to illustrate the power of ideas, imagination, representations, and even visions, and how these dimensions influence the way in which cities are organized and lived. In this article, we argue that one current and important city imaginary in a Swedish context is the gender-equal city. In this imaginary, the gender-equal city becomes a symbol for the open, tolerant, bustling, safe city, a city aiming to attract the middle and creative classes. However, at the same time, the imaginary of the ideal, gender-equal city is highly ambiguous. The ambiguity will be discussed throughout the article. Based on present planning projects in the city of Umea in Sweden, we will discuss how the imaginary of the gender-equal city is presented, filled with meaning and used in place marketing, with the overall ambition of discussing the possibilities and pitfalls of what we call the gender-equality planning strategy. The aim of the article is to study how the city of Umeå is acting to create a gender-equal city and what kind of imaginaries these practices build on. The material consists primarily of a case study focusing on projects that aim to create an equal city, and also includes analyses of policy documents and media reports. This study illustrates how imaginaries are produced through local projects and different imaginaries provide different spaces for politicizing gendered power relations.

The idea of ‘creative cities’ has gained prominence amongst urban planners and policymakers who often now find links between economic development and the ‘soft’ attributes of cities. While definitions of the ‘creative industries’ and the ‘creative class’ continue to be contested, many key urban policy actors continue to focus on developing strategic programmes and policies to boost ‘creativity’ and economic growth. In this article we review recent attempts to implement creative city ideas across five Australian state capitals. Following the analysis of interview material derived from contact with 100 key community and policymaker actors, we first develop a typology of approaches to creative city ideas: concerted action, engagement and strategic drift. We then move on to consider how the idea of the creative city provides a simultaneously criticized yet powerful organizing device that informs local strategies in relation to prosperity. Our analysis highlights a series of connected consequences around four key issues: (1) arts projects and gentrification; (2) housing affordability; (3) revanchist strands to public space management; and (4) relative rates of social investment. We find that the rhetoric of universal social potential accompanying creative city ideas continues to overlook those unable to participate in this new economy, as well as those who are more actively excluded.

Drawing on recent developments in field theory, this article analyzes the struggle for survival of São Paulo’s street vendors in the face of a massive eviction campaign. I conceive of street vending as a social field divided into two unequal categories—licensed street vendors and unlicensed street vendors—and show that responses to the campaign varied along group lines. Unlicensed peddlers either abandoned the field or drew on local networks to continue peddling under harsher conditions, whereas licensed street vendors relied on well-established ties to actors in the political field. After these ties proved ineffective, licensed street vendors survived thanks to the intervention of a non-governmental organization (NGO) that activated the judicial field and mobilized the legal capital vested in the licenses. The linkage role performed by this actor with cross-field networks and expertise shows the strategic import of interfield relations, which replicate and reinforce the unequal distribution of assets inside the field.

The research examines the shift from flood-resistant policies and plans to flood resilience. We use a case study of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina to illustrate this unfolding process and the emergence of a "living with water" approach to green infrastructure. The article highlights the challenges of this shifting policy landscape through the case of the Lafitte Greenway, a green infrastructure project that transformed a three-mile corridor of underutilized public land into a linear park running through flood-prone neighborhoods. Through the experience of creating this greenway, planners in New Orleans learned valuable lessons about US disaster rebuilding policies and how to implement green infrastructure in urban neighborhoods.

This article explores the relationship between pavement cafés, street life and urban public social life. It argues that the licensing of public entertainment and the enforcement of liquor licences and rigid opening times have helped to undermine public social life in English cities. Attitudes which first gained ascendancy in the 1890s have remained dominant and, broadly speaking, unchanged. Nevertheless, there has been a recent and fairly rapid growth in wine bars, cafés and bistros in London and some other English cities. The paper explores whether these help to stimulate public social life. Reference is made to research in Holland and Denmark, and also recent experience in London and Manchester. The paper concludes that city policy makers should, in the short term at least, act to stimulate café culture. Some anti-social and behavioural problems might well require an element of control, and not all urban areas are suited to café culture. Yet in a technological age, café culture represents one of the few remaining opportunities for public sociability. Where it creates a nuisance, it could and should be controlled but this is not the same thing as exercising an all-persuasive moral control which has its roots in Victorian England.

A healthy built environment is one which connects citizens together to create a sense of community. These are influential determinants of good mental and physical health. This paper presents an overview of key research on how the built environment supports the development of community as part of creating and sustaining places for health and well-being. Formal public places such as town squares, plazas, parks and gardens cultivate community in numerous ways. Informal public places such as those in between buildings, on the street, at the train station and bus stop are also important for social encounters and interaction. Careful design of open space, neighbourhood streets and buildings can encourage human interaction as part of community creation. Evidence is presented here as a ‘Places Framework’ to illuminate the ways in which place strengthens community. The paper concludes by discussing and critically evaluating policy implications for urban planners and designers. Major gaps in the research are identified and suggestions made for future investigative work to strengthen the evidence for building healthy communities through built environment interventions.

Using evidence from Cusco, Peru, the paper examines the effects of the planned displacement of informal traders from city-centre streets. Although more than 3500 traders were relocated to new off-centre markets, the research identifies the emergence of 'unplanned' alternative city-centre locations for informal trade, especially the new courtyard markets. The municipal-led changes, influenced strongly by concerns to enhance tourism, reveal a process which displays many of the hallmarks of gentrification. Lower-class traders were displaced from city-centre streets for the benefit of middle-class tourists and local people. There was also gentrification of the trading activity itself: by manipulating stall allocation and pricing structures to exclude the poorest traders from the new higher-quality municipal markets. The changing pattern of informal trading can be viewed as an unconventional 'barometer' of the progress of policy-led gentrification, applicable to other cities in the developing world.

There is growing awareness among many city councils that their downtowns or central business districts have become bland or devoid of sufficient cultural activity to attract the highly skilled, creative workforce that is seen as a prerequisite for competitive success. This paper examines a recent set of policy initiatives to have emerged from the City of Sydney Council that has explicitly sought to mitigate the negative design outcomes of earlier phases of modernist office development through the promotion of a ‘finer grain’ urbanism, based around support for small shops and services, civic spaces oriented towards pedestrians and the reinvigoration of intra-block laneways enlivened by small bars and cafes. The noted Danish urban designer Jan Gehl was an important agent in the development of these strategies, along with the success of similar policies in Melbourne, illustrating the significance of globally operative design professionals and inter-city learning. However, these policies have not gone uncontested, and the paper examines the political context that surrounds their implementation in central Sydney.

The resurgence of informal street trading poses serious challenges for local officials responsible for the maintenance of public space. This article contextualises the tension between public space recuperation and informality, providing a detailed case study of Bogotá, Colombia (population 7.6 million). From 1988 to 2003, Bogotá's mayors implemented one of the most ambitious public space campaigns in Latin America. The 'tipping-points' behind Bogotá's transition are illuminated with emphasis on the introduction of free mayoral elections and the enervation of informal vendor unions. Using a cohort panel design, this research also examines the working conditions and occupational hazards faced by vendors both before and after relocation to government-built markets. It reveals how formalised vendors experienced declining income levels, but improved working conditions. The final section examines public policy implications and the extent to which Bogotá's experience follows traditional models of public space planning in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Discussions of public space and the public have become complicated in recent years. This article seeks to bring some clarity to these discussions by examining where participants in public space debates ‘locate’ the public – those spheres or realms where participants believe a public is constituted and where public interest is found. To identify the ways in which public space is conceptualized and located, we analyze the literature on public space, interviews with scholars actively involved in public space research, and interviews with participants in a series of public space controversies in the USA. We find that differing definitions of ‘the public’ that underlie these conceptualizations are rooted in strongly held political orientations and normative visions of democracy. But we also find that there is considerable overlap in how participants frame their understandings of publicity, and thus there is a basis for more thorough debate and even transformation of policy and practice.

The article focuses on the relationship between street vendors and local authorities in Bangkok. We examine the goals, the means, and the effects of everyday regulation of street vending. We document how the district administration produces and maintains informality by creating a parallel set of rules where street vendors enjoy negligible rents and little competition. We provide detailed empirical evidence on earnings, rents, fines, and rules regarding commercial real estate. The district administration’s policy of “managed informality” results in a situation where more established informal vendors control less established ones. We hypothesize in the conclusion that the district administration’s parallel legal system adjusts to the population’s expectations in a political system where the law has little popular support.

This paper examines the relationship between ethnic residential segregation and two components of the built environment: the geographic distribution of its elements and their spatial configuration (i.e., the spatial relations and visual access between those elements). This relationship is investigated through a case study of Arab-Jewish residential segregation in Jaffa. Statistical and structural analyses (Q-analysis) of this case show that the conjunction of elements having different meanings (symbolic, cultural, functional, etc.) with spatial and visual integration attributes provides varying conditions for the expansion of the Arab Jewish residential patterns, a process potentially affecting the geographic scale intensity of residential segregation. It was found, for example, that public land uses having relatively 'neutral' ethnic and symbolic meanings (e.g. commercial sites and parks) and spatially integrated with the surrounding urban environment tend to moderate residential segregation. Identification of the institutional character of the built environment—segregation/encounters in mixed ethnic areas—may contribute to a more socially oriented spatial policy.

Urban public space is once again a 'hot' topic and figures strongly in place quality discourse. City spaces are being recycled, reinterpreted and reinvented in a drive for a competitive quality of place. This article illustrates the changing face of contemporary UK public space through a qualitative analysis of the perceptions held by public and professional-bureaucratic actors. Drawing on empirical case study research of five recent enhancement schemes at prominent nodes throughout the North East of England, the research explores the culture and economics of urban public space design. Tentative observations are expressed in terms of the links between cultural activity and economic vitality, and some reflections on policy and practice are put forward.

The development of downtown public space has been increasingly defined by agreements negotiated between the public and private sectors. In the last decades the majority of downtown public space has occurred in the form of urban plazas, built as integral parts of privately owned office and retail complexes. In this paper we document the private production of public open space in the downtown areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco - two cities that have used distinctively different policy approaches in forming public-private partnerships. We examine how the process of public open space creation is affected by the culture of planning and development, and discuss similarities and differences in the imagery and form of plazas in the two cities. It is found that urban plazas are the reflection of a market-driven urbanism. As such they are quite homoge- neous in their form despite differences in the planning style and development process encountered in the two California cities.

Experience is conceptualised in both academic and policy circles as a more-or-less direct effect of the design of the built environment. Drawing on findings from a research project that investigated people’s everyday experiences of designed urban environments in two UK towns, this paper suggests at least two reasons why sensory encounters between individuals and built environments cannot in fact be under- stood entirely as a consequence of the design features of those environments. Drawing from empirical analysis based on surveys, ethnographic ‘walk-alongs’ and photo-elicitation interviews, we argue that distinct senses of place do depend on the sensory experiencing of built environments. However, that experiencing is significantly mediated in two ways. First, it is mediated by bodily mobility: in particular, the walking practices specific to a particular built environment. Secondly, sensory experiences are intimately intertwined with perceptual memories that mediate the present moment of experience in various ways: by multiplying, judging and dulling the sensory encounter. In conclusion, it is argued that work on sensory urban experiencing needs to address more fully the diversity and paradoxes produced by different forms of mobility through, and perceptual memories of, built environments.

Safety and security are essential components of urban public space management, particularly since September 11, 2001. Although security is necessary for creating spaces the public will use, making it a top priority is often criticized for restricting social interaction, constraining individual liberties, and unjustly excluding certain populations. This study examines legal, design, and policy tools used to exert social and behavioral control in publicly accessible urban spaces. Based on a review of the relevant literature and extensive site visits to spaces in New York City, we create an index that uses 20 separate indicators in four broad categories to quantify the degree to which the use of a space is controlled. Since comparable instruments do not exist, we propose our index be used to evaluate publicly accessible spaces. We suggest several potential applications useful in planning practice and for testing theories about public space.

Epidemiology, sociology, and geography have been successful in re-establishing interest in the role of place in shaping health and health inequalities. However, some of the relevant empirical research has relied on rather conventional conceptions of space and place and focused on isolating the ‘‘independent’’ contribution of place-level and individual-level factors. This approach may have resulted in an underestimate of the contribution of ‘place’ to disease risk. In this paper we argue the case for extensive (quantitative) as well as intensive (qualitative) empirical, as well as theoretical, research on health variation that incorporates ‘relational’, views of space and place. Specifically, we argue that research in place and health should avoid the false dualism of context and composition by recognising that there is a mutually reinforcing and reciprocal relationship between people and place. We explore in the discussion how these theoretical perspectives are beginning to influence empirical research. We argue that these approaches to understanding how place relates to health are important in order to deliver effective, ‘contextually sensitive’ policy interventions. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Throughout recent decades, socially-mixed neighborhoods have become a key element of urban policy and debate. This paper argues, with Amsterdam as an empirical case, that the design, layout and everyday use of social space—including public and private space—is of key importance in understanding the experiences and perspectives of social- mix policies amongst ‘urban practitioners’, such as planners, architects and management personnel. While the promotion of ‘liveability’, through the management of social problems, is often highlighted as a key element of social-mix policies, the findings presented indicate the degree to which the mixing of different groups according to ethnicity, race and social class presents a number of new challenges for liveability and management within both public and private space. Furthermore, it is argued that these challenges play a significant role in dictating the scale at which social mixing takes place, from the urban block to the street and at the neighbourhood level. It is concluded that a greater amount of attention is needed to such factors in understanding the dynamics of social interaction in public and private communal space when seeking to understand the everyday realities of socially- mixed neighborhoods.

‘Urban identity’ is high on the policy agenda and pervades the discourse of the planning community on the value of historical city centres. Unfortunately, there seems to be, until today, no proposal in scholarly literature of any unified conceptual framework or any tools to make identity operational. ‘Tourism’ takes advantage of this process, by seeking the qualities of the place, its authenticity and its perceived uniqueness that is grounded on the physical features as well as on the presence of local communities – their way of living and investing in the place. The interdependence between identity as perceived by tourists (external observer) and the identity of the residents rooted in the relationship with the place (in-group) are key to addressing the identity of historic urban areas. These issues are addressed in the context of the growing attractiveness of Lisbon, Portugal, using a historic neighbourhood as a case study. The findings, which are on a set of interviews with different groups of users, showed the points of convergence and divergence between the different groups’ views of the neighbourhood’s identity. This actor-oriented approach is pivotal to understanding the process and to produce knowledge for informed action.

People reside in homes; however, they live in neighbourhoods comprised of parks, sidewalks, restaurants, shops and other everyday places. Whether current or potential neighbourhood residents feel at home in these places remains an under theorised aspect of neighbourhood change. Rather than housing policy or real estate development, this essay explores public space as a mechanism of neighbourhood change. Drawing from ethnographic research in the Latino barrios of North Denver, It deconstructs the history of one small yet vital public space—la Raza Park. During the 1970s, this park, its pool and the many events it grounded, built community cohesion and fostered cultural identity. In 1981, city authorities went so far as to deploy a SWAT team to la Raza Park to enforce a permit violation. The following summer, they demolished its pool. North Denver is now gentrifying rapidly. This essay stitches these disparate-seeming events into a story of neighbourhood change.